


Harmonic

by Enchantable



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's come too far and fought too hard to let something so foolish break her. Even if it means breaking a promise to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harmonic

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: fluffy Kaidanovsky fic.

"I need to hide a thought."  
She does not make it a question, nor does she make it a request. It is a demand, issued from a Jaeger pilot to the scientists commanded to do whatever they can to make sure her deployments are successful. The smoke is heavy in their lab, it makes her eyes water but she holds firm, daring them to question her request or ask what the thought she wishes to hide is. One of them takes a drag on his cigarette and she has to restrain herself from putting it out on his arm. 

"Is Lieutenant—"

"If the Lieutenant was aware do you think I would be down here talking to you?" She snaps. 

There’s so much venom in her voice that they jump to attention and she internally cringes. Deep, deep down because they cannot know how humiliated she feels in this moment. Iron, she thinks, I am iron. I am unmoving, I am strong. Win or die, my heart is my Jaegers heart. She thinks these tenants and feels angrier. Angrier and stronger but she’s at the point where she’ll take what she can get. 

Some stereotypes hold, even in the time of Gods and Monsters.

She is a woman and despite the fact that the Kaiju do not discriminate who they kill she is something of an anomaly. A female pilot with a male copilot. The ink on the names from their roster is barely dry before the rumors start. They’re fucking, they’re in love. She’s a cougar and he’s got a thing for old maids. There are seven years and 13 inches between them. It’s not a huge difference but its enough. 

She glares and he scoffs, laughing that their crews should have better things to do than worry about things that don’t matter. There’s a line of girls that trail after him and Sasha just rolls her eyes at the unfairness of it. For the men she’s like a circus freak and after the first one asks her to bench press him she refuses the others. She has better things to do with her time.

She doesn’t know how it happens.

Maybe because he’s her other half and she’s never really had that. Parents died young, siblings scattered and the old ballerina aunt who raised her never could understand why she wouldn’t stop growing. He sees all the fucked up things in her head and he matches them. And underneath all of it is respect. Respect tinged with affection. She cannot burden him with this.

"He may know you’re hiding something," the scientist says.

"As long as he doesn’t know what it is," she growls back.

They teach her and she practices until her head aches, holding the thought and bundling the emotions, pushing them back until they’re buried deep in her mind. She buries them in the darkest corners where he will not go. She is still practicing when the alarm sounds. For the first time there’s a knot in her stomach as she makes her way to the hanger. 

They arrive at the same time and acknowledge each other with curt nods as they strip to the skin. The circuit suits fit over them and tighten, pressing circuit to their skin. Cherno hums even though she’s not active yet. Their armor is buckled and drilled into place and she rolls her neck over the shoulders. They step into the conn pod and the techs follow them, guiding the fibre optic noodles of electrodes to their shoulders and joining them with their Jaeger.

They work efficiently. Cherno requires no drop, just a push back as they lock into the pod. She focuses like the techs taught her, shoving the thought away as they countdown to neural handshake. It engages and their memories and feelings swell up around them like a symphony. Her fingers clench on the grips and her head aches to turn towards him, but she knows that ache is not her own. Their thoughts are a symphony with a sour note that she forces into silence.

"Cherno Alpha ready for deployment," he says and though his voice is steady, she can hear the betrayal in it.

They get their third victory and she wonders if something can ever fell so hollow. 

He barely waits for Chernos foot clamps to slide into place before he pulls the electrodes off his shoulder himself. The neural handshake trembles and falls apart but not before she feels the betrayal pouring off him. He undoes his feet and storms over go the door, moving past the techs who are there to assist him. A few turn and follow to help with his armor. She watches him go, wanting to call him back but not daring to let the words leave her lips.

A day later she finds him working the heavy bag. 

He looks up as she enters and she locks the door before he can move towards it. He’s hurt and angry. She doesn’t think the prints of his knuckles will leave the leather of the bag anytime soon. Her throat works but she cannot form words until he scoffs in his throat and grabs the towel he’s brought in with him. 

"I’m sorry," she says, her voice low and steady. 

"Sorry," he rumbles, disbelief In his voice.

"Yes," she says, raising her chin defiantly. 

He moves fast for someone of his size as he crosses the room to where she’s standing. Their eyes lock and he bears down at her, breathing hard, not solely from the heavy bag. His breath is hot on her face and she can feel the warmth that radiates off him like waves. It takes everything in her to stand still and keep their eyes locked. 

"We said no secrets between us," he growls. 

"This is not for you to know," she shoots back, groping for her anger with desperate fingers. 

"Everything is for me to know!" He roars back, “it is the same for you! We’re all of each other or we’re nothing!"

His anger is blinding and calls to her own, emotions grating like they’re still in each others heads. Shame colors her cheeks, it wraps her in a thick, cloying blanket and she feels like she cannot breathe. Her anger howls to echo his but the shame holds it back. It is every bit a failure when she looks away and presses her lips together before the words can escape her mouth. She mutters an apology instead and he swears. 

"As am I," he bites back and walks away again.

She doesn’t call him back. 

Tension runs high in the Shatterdome as the clock counts to the next Kaiju. They wait. Days turn into weeks as they focus on California and Tokyo. One comes close in Anchorage but its stopped before it gets to them. All the while they are cordial to each other but distant. She’s never believed it possible to miss someone whose shoulder is pressed to your own. 

When the call from the Kaiju comes its almost a relief.

They get suited up together and into their Jaeger and she can almost pretend things are the same. They lock into Cherno’s heart and she lets the notes of the symphony rise up. She tells herself she will deserve it if he blocks things from her. It’s bittersweet when she realizes he has not. Everything is laid bare to her and when she catches flashes of what he has done during their time apart, that black spot in her mind gets harder to hold.

He’s beaten up everyone whose made a comment about her attitude, whose tried to blame her for the distance between them. It is her fault but when they make comments about her and her ‘womanly’ behavior he pounds them into the stone. Not enough to kill, though she knows he’s capable of that. But enough to hurt, to make the lesson stick. You do not insult the woman he loves in his presence—

Her grip on the black spot falters as she stares at him, unable to comprehend what hits her.

He loves her.

It pounds at her because neither of them knows gentle. Neither of them knows delicate or lovely. But it’s there, its theirs. Their minds focus on what she’s hiding. It takes everything for her to release it, to let him see the shame she feels when she thinks of how she’s fallen for her co-pilot. Because he is the most important thing to her and everything she loves turns to dust. Mamma, papa, everything. And she cannot watch this die too. 

It won’t.

The thought presses onto hers. It won’t die because everything she loves only turns half to ash and its the same for him and together, together they can do anything. All or nothing. It isn’t even a choice. 

They’ve never killed a Kaiju so fast in their entire lives.

Cherno’s feet are barely in the clamps as they’re ripping off electrodes and throwing helmets aside. He grabs her face and she pushes herself up his shoulders as their mouths crash into each other. Their drift suits hold them apart but they don’t care. Their minds are singing with the echoes of each other and Cherno sings with them as they kiss. The doors hiss open and then quietly close.

Neither pays it any mind.


End file.
